


When you’re sad and when you’re lonely, and you haven’t got a friend...

by MeinongsJungleBook



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Death, Feelings, Grief/Mourning, I know this sounds grim but there's a happy ending, I promise, Insecurity, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 11:38:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeinongsJungleBook/pseuds/MeinongsJungleBook
Summary: Bumblebee misses Starscream...





	When you’re sad and when you’re lonely, and you haven’t got a friend...

**Author's Note:**

> This is a speculative epilogue scene for the IDW continuity, based on a potential scenario in which Starscream dies during the Unicron series.

Like most Cybertronians, Bumblebee was very accustomed to death; far more accustomed than anyone should ever have to be. He’d lost so many friends over the millennia, from casual acquaintances he barely knew yet knew he liked, to people he loved deeply and fiercely, who he would have given his own life to protect without hesitation, if he’d only had the chance. His deep familiarity with loss made it easier in some ways when yet another friend was snatched away from their world by fate’s cruel whimsy, but in other ways every loss was just as devastating as the first.

This time he had lost so many friends, and some of them were his dearest. Friends he’d known almost all his very long life, who a tiny part of him had dared to hope were somehow exempt from life’s uncaring lottery, had finally been taken by the deaths they’d managed to avoid for so long. Bumblebee supposed he should be grateful that, against all odds, he’d still survived, as had some of his close friends, but in the face of so much loss it was hard to focus on what was left, because wasn’t it just a matter of time before that was taken from him too? Even the fact that he himself had returned from the dead didn’t seem to remedy the grim sense of entropic finality; the handful of miraculous cases such as his own seemed like minor deviations from fate’s determined march towards oblivion.

Bumblebee had come to know many different flavours of grief. There was the grief of losing friends he’d been foolish enough to imagine a future with; the grief of losing friends before having the opportunity to make peace with them over some argument that always seemed so stupid in retrospect; the grief of losing friends who he hadn’t seen in centuries and would now never have the chance to see again. This time, the loss of such close and constant friends left Bumblebee with some of the deepest and emptiest sensations of grief he was familiar with, like his spark had been carved out and replaced with the singularity containing the cold and empty void that had once entrapped him. But he was also experiencing a whole other type of grief that even someone as intimately familiar with loss as himself hadn’t encountered before, as it was grief over the loss of a friend and friendship the likes of which he’d never had before.

In fact, Bumblebee wasn’t really sure if “friendship” was the right word to describe the relationship he’d had with Starscream. Whatever it was they’d had between them had definitely been…intimate, and despite the millions of years of enmity leading up to Bee’s apparent death, and all the insults and bickering that followed it, Bumblebee couldn’t deny that some warm feelings had developed between them, at least on his end. At the end of the day, wasn’t that what friendship basically was: intimacy and warm feelings? So perhaps his relationship with Starscream had been a friendship; an intensely strange, complicated friendship.

Now with Starscream dead, Bumblebee’s grief over the loss of his friend joined the strange tangle of other intense and conflicting feelings he had for him, creating a confusing and overwhelming emotional cocktail that left him in a state of disorientation and misery. It was made so much worse by the fact that in between Bee’s resurrection and Starscream’s death, they’d never had a chance to discuss and come to an understanding about what had happened between them, and what their relationship was now. Well, it wasn’t like that mattered anymore; Starscream was gone, and whatever it was they’d had between them would never have the chance to be anything else. At least that was one thing Bumblebee could be sure of.

Then Bee’s one piece of certainty went out the window when he walked into his quarters and found Starscream in there waiting for him.

They just stared at each other for a moment, before a grin broke out over Starscream’s face, “You can see me,” he said excitedly. “I _knew_ you’d be able to see me!”

Starscream bounded over to him, but some uncertainty crept into the excitement on his face as he stopped in front of Bee, who just continued to stare at him with the same expression of shock. Eventually, Bee reached out a shaking hand to Starscream, which passed right through him; this was exactly what he had expected, but he just had to be sure.

“Bringing back memories?” Starscream asked. “If you’re worried I’m going to annoy you as much as you used to annoy me, then rest assured, your fears are completely founded,” he added, grinning again.

“Is it really you…or am I just going crazy?” said Bumblebee, thinking aloud more than actually asking.

“ _Wow_ , our positions really have been reversed. Why would _you_ be going crazy?” Starscream scoffed.

Bumblebee looked him in the optics, “Because some of my closest friends are dead. Because I just lost my planet. Because…I miss you. I really, _really_ miss you.”

Bee might as well have just started ranting in tongues if Starscream’s reaction was anything to go by; now he was the one looking shocked, and he even took a little step backwards.

“R-really?” Starscream asked cautiously. He looked as though he half expected Bumblebee to scream _psyche!_

“Of course I do! You were the only company I had for years!” Bumblebee yelled in frustration at Starscream’s all too characteristic emotional obliviousness.

“…if you missed me so much, then why did you leave me?” a note of bitterness entered Starscream’s voice.

“What? What are you talking about?” asked Bumblebee, genuinely dumbfounded.

“You just left me without any explanation or goodbyes, and when I next saw you, you were back with your old team, looking _quite_ happy without me,” Starscream replied, a whole melody of bitterness in his tone now.

Bumblebee couldn’t believe what he was hearing; he threw his hands up in exasperation, “I was rescued! And you had gone into hiding! _And we were attacked by a planet-eating planet!_ I’m so sorry that chasing after you to wherever you’d run off to and soothing your hurt feelings wasn’t at the top of my list of priorities!”

Bumblebee regretted his words as soon as they left him. He did think that Starscream was being ridiculous, but he was getting a second chance with him after he thought that he’d lost him forever, and here he was wasting it on being harshly sarcastic.

“Oh, so you spent years wherever it was you were while pretending to be dead, but when it came to being rescued you couldn’t stand to stay there for a single moment longer to, oh I don’t know, maybe say ‘Oh by the way Starscream, I’m getting rescued now, turns out I wasn’t dead or a hallucination after all. Don’t worry; I’ll meet you on the other side.’ I guess I wasn’t worth that effort,” Starscream sneered.

“Starscream, it didn’t happen like that! I don’t know if I would have had the chance to tell you I was getting pulled out…honestly I was so fixated on finally getting out that I…didn’t think to tell you,” it was an honest truth that seemed perfectly reasonable to Bumblebee, but it still didn’t sound so good when he said it out loud.

“Well that’s fair enough, you had your old life to get back to, why would you spare any thought to what you were leaving behind?” Starscream said quietly, looking away from him.

Bumblebee knew Starscream well enough to know exactly what was happening here, “Starscream, just because I got to return to my old friends doesn’t mean that I was planning to just abandon you. You’re my friend too…one of my closest friends,” said Bee softly.

Starscream looked at him again, his expression full of nervousness and suspicion, and a little bit of hope, “How could you have stayed my friend while in with Optimus and his ilk?” he protested.

“Starscream, how can you be dead and talking to me? You’ve gotta admit, stranger things have happened,” Bumblebee replied, his voice still gentle.

Starscream looked away from him again, his expression pensive as he considered Bee’s words.

After a moment Bumblebee spoke again, this time with a slight note of desperation in his voice, “Starscream…please tell me you’re real. Please tell me I’m not just imagining you.”

Starscream’s gaze returned to him; he almost looked scared at the pleading tone in Bee’s voice, “Why do you want me back so desperately?” he asked hesitantly.

“Because I miss you!” Bumblebee replied, frustrated that their conversation seemed to be going in circles.

“But _why?_ ” Starscream pressed; now he was the one sounding desperate.

“Because I came to care about you in the time we spent together. As I got to know you, the _real_ you, I realised that I liked you, and the more time I spent with you, the more my feelings grew. I know we were stuck together back then, but even if I don’t _have_ to be with you, I still _want_ to be with you. I want you in my life forever Starscream,” Bumblebee didn’t fully realise the last part until the words left his mouth, but as soon as he said it, he knew it was just as true as the rest.

For once Starscream looked as though he was at a loss for words. After a few moments he started to stammer, “I-er…I…I think…I’d like that too.”

Bumblebee gave Starscream a very warm and sincere smile, and suddenly found the fact that he couldn’t touch him almost intolerable, “They were able to pull me out and give me a new body; I’m sure they can find a way to bring you back.”

“Wheeljack was the one who brought you back; he’s gone now,” said Starscream, with a hint of sadness in his voice.

Bumblebee felt a wave of grief wash over him when he heard Wheeljack’s name, but he pushed through it so he could keep pressing his point, “There are still scientists left; they may not be as smart, but given time I’m sure they could find a way to bring you back, and until then, we’ll be together.”

“And after?” Starscream asked.

“We’ll still be together,” Bee promised.

Starscream studied Bee’s face, searching for any sign of insincerity, and finding none.  A tentatively hopeful expression formed across his face, before he quickly buried it under a sly look, “Well, we don’t have to be in any hurry; I want to take some advantage of being invisible first, and I’m looking forward to hearing what people have to say about me now that I’m dead.”

Bumblebee replied with a sly smile of his own, “Don’t think that just because our positions are reversed I’m going to let you get away with anything I wouldn’t let you get away with otherwise.”

Starscream smirked, “I’m intangible; I’d like to see how you could stop me from doing anything.”

Bumblebee’s smile cracked into cheeky grin, “I can tell them what kind of body to bring you back in.”

A look of mild alarm passed over Starscream’s face, “That’s some pretty nasty extortion by your standards,” he said, almost sounded impressed.

Bumblebee smirked, “What can I say Starscream? You’ve had an impact on me.”


End file.
